11.21.2006

One of my favorite things to do around Thanksgiving is make Cranberry Sauce and can it. Cranberries are so much better fresh. In my mind, though not everyone's, crannberry sauce is way better with little bits of the berry in it. Make it sweet, tart, and with a hint of citrus. YUMMY. And the little red pretties tout plentiful health benefits.

The recipe is incredibly simple: 1 pound cranberries, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water. I use orange juice instead of water and turbinado sugar instead of plain white table sugar. I can only imagine (until I make some this week, then I will know) how heavenly a little grated ginger would make it!

Add some beer bread rolls, a hearty vegetable pot pie inspired by the November Vegetarian Times, and my own Thanksgiving tradition: whatever kind of beans I have on hand Bean Salad, you've got a filling, satisfying vegetarian meal.

The pot pie I made last time with phyllo dough, filled with roasted fingerling potatoes (less starchy and very creamy), squashes, and green beans. The filling also contains mushrooms, garlic, and onions first cooked in a white wine (I used vermouth) reduction then simmered in water with the roasted vegetables to make a thick broth (add cornstarch or roux), put a phyllo top on it. Bake til golden brown. It's good hot, cold, room temperature, anytime!

I've never tried tofurkey, and since I never was a fan of turkey to begin with, I don't think I'm missing out on anything, but other vegetarians sing accolades of this as a substitute on this bird ravaging holiday . Mushroom gravy seems worth a try, especially for the stuffing my mom makes with veggie broth. All this food talk (it's heavily breaded, isn't it??), I might be doing my own aerobic gardening workout after the big meal.

Or maybe aerobic sewing? Between getting back into the swing of making art, sorting out where the newly-wedded "we" will spend Thanksgiving, keeping up with my 4 boys (The Sneak, Huggie Bear, Wolfie and Murray), laundry for 2, and minimal cleaning house to the point of moderately non-disgusting, I have had a handful of special orders lately. MeOwls, BowOwls, chalkboard placemats, and more. Plus a lot of Christmas gifts will be handmade. And there's the friend's coat that needs repair, my own clothes that need some TLC. . .I've been sewing from 3:30, when I get home from work, to 11 PM the last couple days. Don't get me wrong, I love it! Okay, I love the sewing, not the cleaning, but it is the artwork I want to bide my time with. Sighs all around.

All of this talk of domesticity makes me antsy and paranoid. It doesn't sit well with me that I devote so much time to "homemaking" and the implications of the female stereotype. I rationalize my hobbies and interests a fair amount of time, but I can never feel good about the drastically different responses Hi-C and I get when people find out we're both interested in sewing. He gets awe and a pat on the back, as if a man sewing is unnatural and subsequently amazing. My sewing always seems to be just one of the things women are interested in, as though a needle and thread are encoded in my DNA. Gender determining interests is a strange and awkward philosophy that goes against my own core beliefs. It is also interesting, the pattern of history that has created the stereotype, and I am about to learn all about it. Yesterday I got the book Subversive Stitch in the mail, which tracks the history of threads and those who've worked with them. It's a gender study with vast reaching implications, and I'm ready to resolve myself of this deeply threaded guilt!

Check out the buttons in the sidebar: The "My Art" one I've linked to a slide show, and the "My Resume" links to, obviously, my resume, and subsequently my artwork. Check it out and see what you think. It's kind of ghetto because the resume is on a blog, and the slideshow is a flickr option from f. d.'s flickr toys, but the server for my in-progress web site crashed and I've been ignoring it ever since. These 2 new buttons are me trying to figure out a storyboard for the website.What do you think?